Scorched Skies
by Stuch
Summary: The Air Cavalry is given a chance at repeating its former glory with the Intruder and its use in the invasion of Helghan. One man goes from glorified taxi-driver to 'war hero'. Rated M for all kinds of stuff.
1. Death and Celebration

The ISA Air Mobile Calvary (descendant of the United States of America Army's 1st Cavalry Division) had spent most of its century and a half on Vekta ferrying semi-important military brass around the planet. Their days were spent in near-infinite boredom and their nights were spent flying personal aircraft or - more frequently - drinking and discussing what they wish they could have been doing instead. They spent years gaining advanced flying skills only for them never to be used. The division itself had been reduced and eventually sidelined by man's great leap into interstellar space. Earth's naval forces decided that travelling the vast, dark expanse had more in common with seafaring than flying and ousted the major air forces for the bulk of the projected military spending in this venture. During the First Extrasolar War, elements of the UCA Navy had their own air assault divisions and the Air Cavalry had their flying skills put to the test with supply runs between ships in the fleet. Warfare had changed and there seemed to be no more need for a highly mobile air assault force. And from there the ISA Air Mobile Cavalry remained on Vekta.

Men would join up after reading the rich and exciting history of the division to find nothing of the sort remained. New recruits were often told by the 'old salts' that if they wanted excitement and adventure then they would have to 'sort that out on their own time'. Many did and spent their time off perfecting their flying skills with privately owned ships or commercial jobs on the side. Whether they came up with it or not, they called themselves 'The Shuttle Club' and continued their slow slide out of the history books and into obscurity. This was cemented by their involvement in the Helghast invasion of Vekta when they were charged with removing high ranking military officials from the capital to safety. Once this evacuation was complete they were informed that there was no need for them in the fight and to hold their position. This was the final straw for many who decided to see out their service and leave once the Helghast were forced once more from Vektan soil.

Those who went through with this promise and left for more lucrative positions as commercial pilots came to consider it the biggest mistake of their lives. As the ISA Air Mobile Cavalry was about to be given a chance to relive its golden age, to rebuilt itself from the ground up (as it had done in the run-up to the Vietnam War in the middle of the 20th century). Rumours flew around of a counter invasion and of a high-profile ISA Marine general having himself a falling out with a Navy admiral - he demanded a more suitable insertion method for his men onto Helghan and had been denied. For once all the rumours turned out to be fact.

* * *

><p>The captain walked the line of ships, shouted something that I couldn't hear from inside and received a succession of thumbs up from the crew chiefs sat on the backs of the intruders. My own chief, Sergeant Jones, was sprawled out at the front edge of the intruder's deck and I could see his boots on either side of the cockpit. I turned an envelope over in my hands and folded it away into a pocket. It was from Shelly back on Vekta and I already knew what it said without reading it. Captain Allan's index finger traced the outline of a horizontal disc - an archaic gesture from the days our unit took ancient helicopters into battle - and Jones slapped his hand twice on the bulletproof glass above my head. I gave him the finger in return and threw on the ignition, the welcome hum of the main thruster vibrated up through the chassis to my ass and feet. Checked the dials and levels, all in the green so started up the two, side-mounted manoeuvring thrusters. Pushed out the throttle until the engines were carrying the weight of the intruder, Jones and myself. Then it was just a case of waiting my turn before lifting us up, out of the parking space and into the Helghan sky. For the third time that day I eased my intruder into its allotted slot of the seven ship formation - second from the right hand tip of the arrow.<p>

I looked down over Pyrhuss, an urban sprawl of shanty towns and iron sheet roofs speckled with burning buildings and the funnels of upward smoke they produced. The sky glowed pink from the sun's low refraction through the harsh atmosphere and made for a far nicer day than yesterday. The tide had turned for us with the petrusite grid destroyed the Higs apparently in disarray. We were then ferrying marines into the more affluent downtown areas that had simply been too dangerous to fly in before. We had taken no enemy fire in our two earlier missions, not so much as one crazy grunt on a rooftop begging us with his rifle to shred him up with our gun placements (Jones would have been more than happy to help him out). I had a smile on my face as we reached the marine forward operating base in the Salamun Market and moved into a holding hover above the buildings - forever waiting our turn.

I looked downtown, to my right, and the sun glared in my eyes. Manoeuvring the intruder I was able to put a taller structure between the sun and myself. The boots had disappeared from my peripheral vision and I heard Jones tread carefully around the deck. There was a flash, the light of a new sun, that blinded me, filled the cockpit and the surrounding sky. I was gone before I even had time to lose control of the ship, incinerated by the heat of this new sun. Pyrhuss disappeared with me, a city destroyed in less than an instant. My last thoughts were of Shelly in the arms of another man.

* * *

><p>I awoke with a startled jerk and reached for my watch on the night stand out of some reflex - I had only been asleep for three hours. My mouth tasted dead inside and I sat up to find that my head had been filled with razor blades. The slightest movement brought a painful throb and once I became accustomed to it I swung my legs out of the bed. I stayed there for a minute of two and nursed the beginnings of my hangover with my head in my hands. The bed sheets slipped away from around me as she rolled one way then the other and created a cotton cocoon for herself. I peered over my shoulder and could make out a flurry of brunette hair at the top, the curls so perfectly placed that she could have styled it herself just before I woke up.<p>

There was rain at the window, a steady crackle at the glass. Getting to my feet was a mistake and the sudden rush of blood made my brain feel like it was trying to break out of my skull. Each step shook up the razorblades and it was seven flat-footed thumps to the en suite bathroom. "Lights," talking forced me to again taste the muck that had accumulated, "One quarter brightness and five second shift." The bathroom slowly hummed into life and after five seconds I found that one quarter brightness was still enough to overload my eyes, adding a new new pain to the sensory cocktail. Two more heavy steps and I was able to lean myself against the edge of the chrome-plated sink. The mirror was not flattering. The two days' growth and dark circles under my eyes I had expected, the plaster along my jaw and bruising on the opposite cheek I had not. My hair was a mess and there were small scabs on the knuckles of my right hand. I gave my face a quick splash and turned unsteadily back to my room.

"Lights off," I belched the second word and I felt the beginnings of bile come up my throat. I managed to crack one shoulder off the door frame on the way back through and let out a muffled 'fuck sake'. Over to the window to find my lighter on the carpeted floor and the pack of smokes perched precariously on the sill - a bad habit brought about by waiting around for generals with too much time on their hands. A hazy memory of staggering into the room and placing them there returned to me. I picked up the lighter using the window for balance and watched briefly the dancing silhouettes of rain on the plastic blinds.

"Blinds open," an unlit cigarette bounced in my lips and the blinds that obscured the glass along one length of the room flipped silently through the ninety degrees. It was still a few hours until dawn and at night Vekta City looked like a star-filled sky at ground level. Street lights beamed down far below my twentieth floor apartment and the odd light remained on in other buildings of varying heights. Some ships went by, hovering gently on the sodden night air and the beams of their headlights caused me short-lived, excruciating pain. All of this I saw through a raindrop filter, which cloned and distorted all spots of light before they passed through the glass. The only clear image was a semi-reflection of my bruised and weary face, made clear by the flame from my antique Zippo lighter for a fleeting moment. The room, sensing the smoke, opened a vent above the window and began quietly removing the fumes outside. I heard a ruffling of bed sheets behind me.

Without turning I asked, "How long have you been awake?"

"Since you made that ruckus coming back out the bathroom," she whispered, her siren tones seemed to draw me back to bed, "No kisses for you after that cigarette."

"Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted one before it either. Did I wake you, coming in?" I turned to see her knelt at the end of the bed. Sheets wrapped up around her that hid everything I had seen intimately before, her modesty did nothing but put my imagination into motion. A worried expression shot over her soft features as she saw the state of my hand and face. She beckoned me over with an outstretched arm, I left the cigarette hanging over the edge of the window sill and sheepishly dawdled over to her.

"You've been fighting again," she was not gentle in checking my hand, forced the fingers apart and flexed them to test for breaks, "At least there's no glass this time. And your face?"

"Baby, I'm fine," the tone you would give your nagging mother. Memories of the night came back to me, I had been out celebrating with some guys from the company when a Navy asshole mouthed off about the Air Cav never seeing combat. I opened my mouth to tell her this but she cut me off.

"I don't care how or why," she scolded me and my attempts to change her mood with soft petting of her slender shoulders only made things worse, "Don't even think about it. And get some sleep, you're seeing my father tomorrow. She lay back down and wrapped herself up with all of the sheets, facing outward and away from my half of the bed. I let my body go limp, floundered onto the mattress and purposely bounced her out of the comfortable position. I couldn't see but knew this had made her smile. We would go to bed angry, having said horrible things to each other, but I would always wake to find her arm around me again. That night would be no exception.

* * *

><p><strong>More of a prologue than a full chapter. The main character will be killed by the nuke during the course of Killzone2, I dunno setting myself a target of when to end it will probably make writing it a lot less of a chore - having the end in sight and all the rest of it. The plan is to cover the introduction of the 'Intruder' into the ISA and its use in the invasion of Helghan. Most of this I will be making up from scratch because GG seem to have given almost no information on its inception or use. I think I can remember only one glimpse of a pilot and that was so he could be stabbed in Killzone3. Anyway, I have a lot of ideas of where to go with this and I am trying something a little outside of my comfort zone by including a romantic angle with a girlfriend and his relationship with his father-in-law.<strong>

**Second 'chapter' coming soon.**


	2. I Had The Choice

I had anticipated seeing Shelly's father although I never pretended to myself that he liked me at all. He was high up in the ISA Engineering Corps and we discussed only two matters, Shelly and the ISA, both were of the utmost seriousness to him. I owed him a lot as my foot in the door of the Air Cavalry - during my courtship of his daughter I had expressed an interest in flying - and still remember his advice on joining them, "The working hours will bore the ever-loving shit out of you. But the training and flying experience will more than make up for that." I joined three months before the Helgast invasion of my home world and spent that time resupplying special op training camps or taking generals out of Vekta City to nod at things. The ships we flew were slick but slow, boring dropships. They were all auto-pilot scenery tours, smooth as you like to control and I hated every second. No bumps, no swerves and 'no fancy bullshit' as one colonel had told me whilst boarding (spittle from his mouth at the start of 'bull-' landed on my face). What I couldn't fault was the money, it kept us living a comfortable life in the capital and even during the invasion itself we were kept away from the realities of the situation.

Shelly's father got her out of the city the second the first Helghast boot touched Vektan soil and the cowardice of the men I spent my working hours flying around meant that I didn't see so much as a single enemy grunt. For the two of us, safely on a military base that was hours from Vekta City, the war was just a far away event. Something that we would simply have to wait to blow over. Needless to say that I wanted to be out there. Not out of some desire to fight and not even revenge for what I could only imagine had happened to my home (I would discover later that my fifteenth floor apartment quickly fell to ground level), but I just wanted a chance to push my flight skills to the limit and help out where I could. About four months after the invasion, just after our apartment building had been rebuilt and we were able to move back to Vekta City, I got my wish.

There appeared on the notice board of our barracks a sign-up sheet for advanced flight training and I don't think there was one guy in our outfit who didn't put his name on it. If I was being honest, my gut told me that there was nothing voluntary about it but it's nice to be given the illusion of choice in some matters. It was a month of day in, day out flying with more than half of our waking hours spent in the air aboard small, two-seater jet engined fighters. The other seat was taken up by one of the veteran pilots in the capacity of hands-on instructor. The ships were the best part of a half-century old but the most manoeuvrable thing I ever had the pleasure of piloting. A host of veteran instructor pilots from several outfits put us through our paces. I remember the first time I hit nine Gs, feeling like I wanted to die, my vision blurred and I couldn't move. My instructor pilot just laughed at me over the intercom and I don't want to think about what he heard from me. Only when we had been scared suitably shitless did they let us get our hands on the controls and then things got truly frightening.

Flying the thing was hard enough at first. Getting used to the control stick in conjunction with the pedals that commanded the ship's orientation, if there had ever been an auto-pilot function on these rust buckets then engineers had been sure to rip it out before we got out hands on them. It was an education for me, having let myself slide into slovenly flying habits from the shuttle dropships, but others weren't being taught anything new. What was new for all of us however were the complete engine cut-outs. Utterly everything could be going wrong; fuel leaks, pressure readings, cross-winds and you're just pulling into a tight-ass turn. _This _is the moment the instructor pilot would choose to cut out the engines wholesale and gauge your reaction. Your stomach is in your throat and your arms pull up on the control stick in reaction to the sudden free fall. What you're supposed to do if you have the altitude is calmly get the ship stable before going through a quick engine start-up procedure and if you don't have the height you are supposed to perform a crash landing (and hope you don't break your spine or his). On the first few occasions the instructor pilot is the one to get everything back to normal again whilst I was busy screaming, "Shit!" over and over again. After enough of these terrifying situations it becomes second nature and I started going through the engine restart like there was nothing wrong.

After the month's intensive training only six of the sixty-three who started the course didn't make it through (and half of those failures were through injury). A testament to how long we had been waiting for the opportunity. The day after we received word of our completion of the final flying test I went out, got shit-faced and knocked out cold by a Navy officer. The night out took place at a local officers' club that I had frequented since passing officer training. I was officially a Warrant Officer which 'real' officers will happily remind me means that I am little more than a grunt with a skill and as this point I politely ask, "Would you like to fly there yourself, sir?". But the pay was the same as a second lieutenant which was perfectly fine with me. I went back to the club the following day to talk with Shelly's father.

"Do people know this?" I swallowed my mouthful of tap water to get the question out more quickly. The fan above our heads let out a steady beat of air on sweating brows and a beam of sunlight cut diagonally down the dusty air through the crack between the swing doors. The city absorbed heat during the day, in the ours near after noon it became unbearable and I had to hide from the sun (usually in a bar). Shelly's father sat across from me and eyed me confidently, the face of a man with a secret to share. He was red-faced from the heat and it juxtaposed his white head and facial hair in a hilarious manner.

"Worst kept secret in the whole of the ISA," he sat back in his chair, arms folded and sweat dribbled down from his long-receded fringe, around his eyebrows and made a mad dash for the chin, "Don't they have air conditioning in this place? A ceiling fan! Positively archaic!"

"So how long?" I toyed with the plaster on my chin, having tried my best to clean myself up for this 'informal' chat - I had shaved and showered but everything still ached and throbbed with any sustained effort. There was no fooling him, Mr. Golding (I had spent two years waiting in vain for him to say 'call me George') knew what I had been up to the night before either from his own intuition or from Shelly.

"Eighteen months at least," he said. The man didn't waffle or waste his words and downed his drink after dropping this bombshell. He then shouted over to the bar, "Sweetheart! Another?" A young, non-plussed woman shimmied over to our table and poured him another drink. "Thanks darlin'!" She smiled at him but I saw it immediately disappear as she turned. He pointed to my glass with a raised eyebrow and the offer of something stronger.

"No thank you, sir," my head still screamed from the last night's adventures and I tried to swerve the conversation back on track, "Eighteen months? So why put us through the training now? This soon?"

He sipped his drink and wiped away the droplets that hung onto the tips of his moustache, "Okay, now this is a better kept secret. Mainly because it involves a personal grudge between a pair of four-star assholes." I leaned in closer. "The boys are working on a new ship for troop deployment to be used exclusively by the ISA marines - at least at first. And a marine general does not want to use Navy pilots."

"So General Marr gets wind of this personal gripe," I mused, "And drops the Air Cav into the Marines' lap?" He nodded whilst taking another gulp, I was paying for the drinks after all. "So what's the ship like?"

His nodding switched to a shake, he put down a suddenly empty glass and the ice jumped and jostled for a moment, "Now _that _I certainly can't tell you and if you go for this opportunity you will find out at the same time as everybody else."

"If?" I absent-mindedly scratched at the knuckles on my right-hand and stopped when I realised.

"I am offering you the choice right here, right now not to have to go to Helghan," he let that hang in the air between us for a moment before he continued, "She loves you Jacob, fuck knows why but she does. And if you weren't to come back, well... you wouldn't come back. On the other hand I understand what a chance this is for a pilot like you, for the whole division." We didn't break eye-contact, you can always trust the person who openly does not like you. "You decide to stay here on Vekta and I will get you off combat duty with bullshit medical condition, but you won't be able to stay in the Cav. You go to Helghan and I will back up your choice with Shelly, help her understand."

He didn't owe me anything, Shelly and I weren't married, even engaged. But here he was offering a choice like that to a man who could easily take it and then walk out on Shelly the day after the invasion. He offered because he knew me and he already knew my answer. He cemented the offer while my mind raced, "Shelly never has to worry about anything but your safety. You know that."

I looked over to the bar, "Kirsten, I'll have whatever he's having."

"Coming up Jake," she brought my drink over with an honest smile and glided back to the bar. No sound now but the ceiling fan above our heads. I downed the drink and slapped the table twice as it burned my throat, I foresaw another hangover.

"One thing, Mr. Golding," I said solemnly, "Let me break this to her."

He nodded, "Of course."

"Because I don't want to open that door only to have something thrown at me. Another?"

"She won't be happy and will throw a tantrum," George looked at the table, "She gets it from her fucking mother, rest her soul. But no to the drink, I have to get going." There was a duet of creaks as we pushed out our chairs and stood up at the table. We walked round, shook hands and he made for the exit without another word. The bar was brought momentarily into the light and sound of outside as the door swung open and closed. I went back to the table and slumped into my chair. My thoughts turned to Helghan, all I knew then was ISA propaganda and horror stories. I couldn't break this to Shelly with a drink in me, I would need to be sober and awake.

"Kirsten? Another?" I had another eighteen months to tell her my choice, to make that leap. Except that I had already been pushed.

I was positively lubricated by the time I paid my tab and began the unsteady twenty minute (it usually only took ten) walk back to the still new apartment building. Vekta City was bathed in the sunshine of late afternoon and I would have enjoyed it more had I not been paying such careful attention to my feet. The world twirled every so slightly as I thudded up to the eight steps to the double doors of the building and stood waiting for an elevator. I staggered into it before anybody had a chance to get out and slurred apologies to three fellow residents who had to edge around me. As it closed behind me I heard a shout, "Hold the doors!" and a red, puffy face popped round into view. Upon seeing my drunken state he was suddenly not in such a rush, "Oh, I'll get the next one." I grinned at him and slumped against the elevator's hand rail. The doors closed to save me more embarrassment.

Twenty floors to try and sort myself out, attempt to lessen the impact on our relationship of getting drunk two days in a row. Of course I had good reason this time to search for the bottom of a bottle, but couldn't tell her of it. With no mirror I had to hope that running my hands through my hair was having the desired effect. Slapping my face did nothing to help the drowsiness but sure as hell put a little colour in my cheeks. The doors opened on my floor and gravity pulled me out into the corridor, my feet simply tried their best to keep my upright instead of walking. My door was about twenty half-hearted steps down the carpeted floor, leaning every so often against the wall. I reached the door and fumbled with my magnetic key. It opened up from the inside.

I smiled when I saw her, it was a mistake.

* * *

><p><strong>Ugh, this weather is fantastic but awful for finding the time to do some writing and work is constantly on my ass to get shit done. Anyway, another chapter is up. Next chapter introduces the characters who should be with our protagonist for the rest of the story and indeed will introduce the Intruder itself. <strong>


	3. General McGuire

"So what did she say?" Rick asked me whilst he zipped up his flightsuit. I replied with nothing more than a look as I stepped into my own. The two of us were in a long-abandoned control station that stood on an equally dishevelled runway outside of Vekta City. We had been instructed to arrive in civilian clothes and change on site. This was an attempt to keep events as low-key and confidential as possible. I had arrived early with Richard Davis, a fellow warrant officer but far more experienced pilot. He had his black hair slicked back and I had never seen him anything less than clean shaven. Suave was the best word to describe him, the man dripped pure confidence. He rolled his sleeves up to the elbow as he continued to hand out his wisdom to me, "Shelly's a stand up dame. I mean I like her and everything but Jacob, the girl is fucking nuts." He shoved clothes into his duffel bag and pulled out a pair of sunglasses which he carefully hung out of one breast pocket.

I zipped myself up and looked over at him, "You're a handsome devil. I'll dump her and we can run away to Helghan together." He didn't reply and left a silence long enough that I worried he was seriously considering the offer. "I'm kidding of course."

"Shame," he sighed and picked up his bag. This was a habit of his, turning a joke against the person telling it and as a result I could rarely pick apart what was a serious statement with him, "I'll be outside if you change your mind."

Over the following hour the empty, weed-ridden airstrip became increasingly active with military personnel - so much for a confidential operation. Rick and I stood against the wall of the defunct radar station and chain smoked whilst we watched the circus. The mix of engineers and pilots gradually switched from their gaudy personal outfits into their crisp uniforms and naturally the 'proper' officers were the last to arrive (in uniform, which made me wonder why the rest of us had even bothered). By the allotted hour there were more than one hundred and fifty by my own count. "Hey Rick, Jake, what I miss?" a hand was on my shoulder and the sound of gum being chewed open-mouthed was in my ear.

I spoke without turning and watched the mess of men running around with nothing to do, "Not much apart from Rick getting undressed. Know how much you love that." The hand shoved my shoulder and I nearly feel straight over onto my face. "Christ. When did you get so strong Tim?" I turned to look him to find more of a mess than usual, his hair has been styled by his pillow the night before and there was still sleep in his eyes.

"I have a lot of time for the gym these days," he said with a forced smile, "And the couch is getting pretty damn comfortable." Rick offered him a cigarette but he declined, the incessant chewing of gum instantly made sense.

The cigarette offer rebuffed, Rick gave his two cents instead, "It's your house Tim. That bitch has you well and truly by the balls."

I jumped in before Tim had chance for a retort, "Tim's wife is a fearsome woman. We should be sending her to Helghan, higs would surrender within the hour." Rick and I broke into laughter before Tim eventually shrugged and flashed a grin in agreement.

Rick then decided to steal my thunder and share the news, "Jake finally broke the invasion to Shelly." All this talk of strained relationships had pushed Tim to spit out his gum and outstretch a hand to beg for a cigarette.

He spoke whilst Rick checked the pockets on his flightsuit - we looked like a trio of boyscout mechanics, all overalls and badges, "You sleeping on a couch now too?" Before I could answer out battalion commander, Colonel Kyte, yelled over the general hum of male voices.

"Shuttle Club! Line up!" We let out a collective groan at the use of the derogatory nickname, especially in front of the engineers (and even though we regularly used it ourselves) but hurried across the tarmac and formed neat ranks in line with the runway. We were all in varying states of personal grooming and hygiene. Rick was the top standard to which we the rest of us made no attempt to attain, all well pressed, pruned and several men looked like homeless bums in comparison to him. Tim was representative of the other end of the scale; flight suit not fully zipped, stained vest underneath, boot laces lazily tied and dirty fingernails. The whole nine yards of how not to appear in front of the colonel, who rather worryingly was not saying a single word about the state of us. I was somewhere in between these two ends of the scale, passable I presumed. I was wrong. The unit of engineers lined up to our right, perpendicular to the runway. They were perfect, not a hair out of place and standing loosely at ease. Some smiled at us as they though they knew our fate, what do they know that we didn't? I remember thinking. I would soon get my answer.

Col. Kyte suddenly screamed at us, "Jeeeeesus boys! Look at you ragtag fucks!" We readied ourselves for a chewing out that never came and he simply shook his head at us instead. Something was definitely up and even he was dressed to the nines. Whatever the secret was he knew it too. 'The Shuttle Club' muttered quietly amongst themselves and some even smoked some cigarettes when they saw the colonel wasn't going to anything about it. Complacent bastards. We forever whined that we weren't taken seriously enough and there we were, our first chance to prove ourselves and looking like a bunch of assholes playing pilots for fancy dress. We deserved everything we were about to get. Rick noticed it first, a speck off in the distance toward the capital that revealed itself to be a cargo vessel of some kind and brought with it a quiet hum of thrusters.

"A-326, flat bed carry cruiser," the bastard showed off, "Slightly lower pitch than the basic A-32."

"You get a boner for that shit, huh?" I glanced over at him and he winked at me. The ship closer and proved Rick correct, the A-326 was essentially a flying truck with a thirty foot trailer dragging behind it. On the back of this one was a large object about the size of a small tank obscured by a bright blue plastic sheet, a corner of which flapped violently in the cross wind. Under this I assumed was the prototype of the ship we would be taking to Helghan. All that pomp and ceremony to lift up a dusty sheet? There must be something else, I thought. And it wasn't until the craft landed in a sea of upturned dust and two men clambered out of its cab that it all made sense.

One of the men was General Malcolm Marr, the three-star in charge of the whle Air Cavalry division. He was a staunch, pot-bellied figure for whom the stars weighed heavily on his shoulders and was indicative of the whole unit. The man was not combat leader material, few men in the Air Cav at that time were anywhere close to being such. His relaxed attitude to leadership was well known, especially to himself and he made sure that those under him (those actually in charge of personnel) were far harder. People like Colonel Kyte kept us in line. Or so we had thought. The other man who climbed down the ladder - he jumped down the last three rungs - and swaggered over to us we knew by reputation only. General Donald McGuire was the meanest sonofabitch I would ever lay eyes on. And before going into the gory details of my first encounter with him I should first outline what I knew, as it all flashed through my head as he strode out of that dust cloud.

McGuire had spent his entire military career in the ISA Marine Corps. which had, since the move into space and like all military outfits since, lived in the shadow of the Navy. But the Corps wasn't about to let centuries of blood-letting go to waste and were able to keep themselves as a separate operational unit, although they were technically a part of the new, all-encompassing Navy war machine. They had their own recruitment process, they own training programmes, their own reconnaissance teams and their own support and supply structure. The Navy allowed all this because the Marines got results; they would be dropped onto a hostile world or colony that decided to annex itself and go about their business of making the enemy change their mind about the situation. What the Navy brass did make sure of is that they were the ones to drop the Marines and pick them up again - not to mention take the credit for their efforts.

General McGuire joined the Corps as a second lieutenant fresh out of the ISA Officer Academy and instantly set about proving himself as pure leadership material in quelling a short-lived uprising in a neighbouring star system. He rose quickly through the ranks and was a full-blown Colonel after only six years, in command of an infantry battalion. After this he made the strange decision of serving in the Marine Special Forces when he could easily have disappeared into a high-ranking desk job for life. But he had his eyes further up the command and knew the knowledge the special forces could give him would put him ahead of those trying to move up the same ladder. He reached general faster than anybody that century and spent the rest of the decade (leading up the invasion of Vekta) improving the Marine name and taking them from the Navy's teet wherever possible. He sometimes had trouble separating himself from the grunt on the ground which worked as a double-edged sword, loved by the men and viewed with suspicion by fellow brass.

Nonetheless he was second in command of the ISA Marine Corps. when the Helghast invaded and set aside quite a chunk of his time for brief visits to the front line. I remember a rumour that during one visit the platoon he shook hands with was ambushed. The general supposedly responded by snatching an M82 from one of his security entourage and returned fire on the enemy before being dragged away for his own safety. Something told me he would have been just fine. After the war and a shock resignation of his superior few could argue that McGuire hadn't earned a shot at the top spot. His first major act was to offer the full services of the Marines in any future counter attack against the Helghast. His offer was so readily accepted by the ISA High Counsel that a Navy general - in an attempt to save face - said he would offer and entire fleet to get the marines on the ground.

But this wasn't just some grass-roots colonist uprising that needed to be stopped in its tracks by a massive show of force and McGuire recognised this. He requested an alternate method of insertion, something fast and able to respond quickly to an ever changing theatre of combat. The Helghast hadn't been waiting one hundred and fifty years just to let ISA cruisers land on top of their capital he had been quoted as saying - a heavily censored version I was sure. McGuire knew that he could climb no higher on the command ladder and would never take a place on the High Council, the head honchos of the Navy would never allow it. And so his progress was then tied directly into that of the Marine Corps itself, both needed to prove that they could work outside of the normal confines placed on them by the Navy. Which is where the Air Cavalry came in. The general just had one major hurdle before the sprint to Helghan; 'The Shuttle Club'.

The first thing that struck me as he walked over to our formation was his overall stature, he was a good few inches over six feet and built like a shit brickhouse. His face was expressionless, any emotions he carried with him were left to boil under the surface. A scar ran from close to his right eye and down over the cheek - the man was a notorious drinker and he got it from the wrong end of a broken bottle during a brawl. McGuire walked ahead of the sheepish Marr and the Marine general attracted all of our attention. He carried his side-arm that day, maybe he had it to scare us, maybe in case the Helghast decided to launch another surprise invasion. Hell, maybe he carried it so he didn't have to shake hands with people. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his upper arms and the tanned skin of his forearms was adorned with marine tattoos. Those who chatted shut up instantly upon realising who was walking over and those who had been smoking before furiously stamped the butts into the tarmac.

The generals stopped some ten feet in front of us and we were left to sweat in silence for what felt like an hour before McGuire eye-balled each of those in the front row in turn. When his steely gaze reached me I froze and stared straight ahead knowing that the one thing I couldn't do was make eye contact. I passed the impromptu test and he moved onto Rick to my right. After he was done with his silent build up, he placed his hands on his hips and let out a slow whistle through his teeth (my father used to do something similar when trying to figure out a suitable punishment for me as a child). As though the gesture was a cue, General Marr started to address us in his usual friendly stammer, "G-good morning men, I mean troops, I mean..."

McGuire rolled his stern eyes and lifted a hand to quieten Marr. "You know what Malcolm," his voice was quiet and controlled, "I think I've got this." General Marr shrank back, bemused and hurt. I sensed that McGuire had planned to talk to us the whole time and embarrassing the leader of our entire division brought home home who would be the boss from that point on. "I'll skip the usual pleasantries, I have places to be. You're here to see what the cogheads over there," he motioned toward the engineers, "Are calling the Intruder. But more importantly I am here to get a look at you men and frankly, I am not impressed." I had heard that Gen. McGuire was as foul-mouthed as any marine under his command and to hear such a fair introduction lulled me into a false sense of security. One of us had apparently been lulled further than the others and an anonymous joke slipped out from somewhere behind me.

"I'm not too impressed either."

The general's face broke into its first expression, the slightest of smiles. The kind of knowing smirk I might have had slipping on a set of knuckle dusters. His voiced remained quiet but I could hear the reservoir of rage hidden behind it, "Who said that? Nobody said it. You own up now and things stay easy." Silence. He walked along the front rank and stopped in front of me. I didn't know it at the time but a hand had gone up in my column and the general stared intently through me and three others to the man responsible. So I was scared shitless as he moved straight at me with a look like he was about to tear my head off, "Fucking move!" And I did, faster than I had ever moved before in my life. His shoulder smashed into mine and I instinctively apologised - "Sir, sorry sir." - before I moved back into formation and stared straight ahead. I heard two more hurried apologies to the general and then the sound of him screaming through gritted teeth, "Get your slimy, maggot ass off my fucking airfield." The vocal upstart then made another mistake.

"W-what sir?"

"You might well stutter you fucking rimjob, but I sure as shit don't! Now move!" There followed a fleshy thud and the sharp exhale of breath, which I was later told was McGuire punching the smartass in the gut. Grounds for an investigation by a military court under normal circumstances but this was a classified meeting. The warrant officer was never officially there to be punched nor was the general ever there to dish it out. You got the impression that all of his first meetings with personnel were classified. Neither General Marr nor Colonel Kyte said a word as this punishment was swiftly handed out and McGuire walked back out of our midst (flexing the fingers on his right hand) and stood looking at us for a moment. Behind me was the slapping of boots as the recently assaulted officer got as far away from the general as possible. I never saw or head from him again.

"Right!" the general had his hands on his hips again, "Change of fucking plan since you shitheads don't seem to be able to dress yourself without _ass_-istance." The emphasis on the final word was a joke that only he found funny but then, who else needed to? "Oh and of course, here's your ship ladies!" On that order two engineers double-timed over to the A-326 and dragged the plastic sheet from over its obscured load to reveal the 'Intruder'. I glanced over (we all did) and remember thinking it looked more of an agricultural vehicle than for military use; a functional mess of metal with a small cargo deck on its back. But at that point none of us were given the time to dwell on the ramifications of it.

"I did _not _say look at it! Jesus Fucking Christ!" My eyes zipped back to the front again, to a tree line on the far side of the airstrip. I tried my best to look at the Intruder in my peripheral vision, nothing but a grey blur. "You have ten minutes starting... now to go back inside and come back out looking like actual fucking military personnel." Some made the mistake of moving as he paused, I was not one. "No! On my fucking order! You! You! You! And you! Wait another one minute! The rest of you... fucking move!"

McGuire finished barking and I moved like a man possessed toward the control station. Rick jogged up alongside me, "I dunno about you, but I kinda like the guy." Never could tell when he was joking. Tim ran over to us, his face was white as death.

"Tell me you have a fucking razor with you!" We tore around inside like a mob, checking each other for anything that looked remotely outside of uniform regulation. Those two hours had been an introduction. To General McGuire, to the Marine Corps. itself and a small taster of the following six weeks of training that he both the pilots and the engineers through. What it wasn't was an introduction to the Intruder and not one of said a single thing about in those eight minutes. We didn't see another one until we passed the marine training, by which point we didn't even care. But then that was the idea.

* * *

><p><strong>Perhaps I should take a moment to comment on the structure of the story overall. Each chapter is essentially a flashback further on in time. So if it seems a little disjointed or if a lot of questions are left hanging, I am not being lazy, it's on purpose. The idea is the character is looking back on the events leading up to his death. It's not just an excuse for shoddy closure of chapters I promise. I make no apology for continuing to write about marines, they are just too interesting not to. That men can be so violent and distasteful yet you can empathise with them not ten seconds later is fascinating to me. Plus I am always looking for an excuse to play 'Killzone 2' again - since single-player is the only real option afforded to us right now. I'd ask for a review, but nobody (well, apart from one) does anyway.<strong>


	4. We Were Broken

Being away from Shelly for six weeks (and that time spent being yelled at and figuratively shat upon by the Marine Corps' training process) did not do much in the way of repairing our fraught relationship. But we were still together and remained living other the same roof, which I guess must have counted for something. I had three weeks between finishing the bootcamp and heading off again for the real training with the Intruder. Three weeks was not long enough to fix anything and we both acted accordingly. Days seemed to merge together and only Shelly's leaving for and coming home from work reminded me of the passage of time. I spent most of the day drinking and reading, literature on Helghan and the Helghast for the most part. The majority of which was written by Vektans so it was often difficult to cut through the ISA propaganda to find the nugget of truth that was actually of any use. A few papers and publications were actually from Helghan itself but the versions that had filtered down into public consumption were so heavily censored with thick black bars - even in their electronic format - that they were scarcely worth reading at all.

I read in the apartment, slumped deep into the couch in the center of our minimalist living space and the data pads piled high on the frosted glass of the coffee table. I made little attempt to hide the material from Shelly. She would stop for a moment upon returning home, stare at the data pads and then at me before she disappeared into our room to shower or cry or whatever she did in there. I was usually too drunk too care all that much. The drinking, I was making far less attempt to hide that too. Not that I had ever been been secretive about it before then but simply had limited the amount I drank in front of her - choosing instead to slink away to the officers' club. In those three weeks though I just let loose and it wasn't uncommon for me to wake up on the couch with a slap to the face. The glass slipped from my hand and the ice long melted into the thick rug. She would shout and ball about me having a problem, sit next to me on the couch before she realised it yet again fell on deaf ears and ran off to the bedroom or out to see her friends.

There were a small number of occasions when things felt normal again. Days where I made concentrated effort to hide both my work and the drinking, where I would actively await her return from work and surprise her with something to make her smile. On those days we would go for long walks or somewhere nice for a meal. Whether we actually forgot about the impending separation or simply pretended it would never happen I will never know, but what difference did it make in the end? Those few hours of bliss were more than worth the eventual crash back down to reality. It could be anything, a news report or a silence that lasted just long enough for us to remember what was going to happen. Her face would turn to anger and sadness or she would suddenly let go of my hand. On one occasion she beat at my chest with closed fists and I had to hold her tight until she broke into tears.

I could never find the words or ever got angry at her sudden swings in mood. I made the choice to go away from her and deserved everything she threw at me. Whether she knew then of the choice I had made in the company of her father I was never sure. I certainly hadn't told her that I had the opportunity not to go and her father wouldn't have upset her in such a way. I think if she had known I had actually chose to go to Helghan she would have left me on the spot.

We didn't sleep together in those three weeks... or perhaps I should specify; we didn't literally sleep together, I spent my nights on the couch whilst she kept the bed. I never told Tim of this arrangement, half because I didn't want to listen his problems and half because I didn't want to liken myself to him. Shelly and I still had sex though, perhaps even more so than we did when things weren't quite so tense. Each time was a depressingly desperate and entirely physical affair, a fumbled and brief encounter with minimal eye-contact. It's not entirely necessary for you to like the person you are having sex with and it was her one real chance to work out her frustrations with me. She would make the most of the opportunity with slaps and scratches just painful enough to let me know she meant it but not enough to make me stop. Once we had both finished (no reason to be selfish) she would glide away to the shower of I would get up to 'make a quick phonecall', anything to avoid the awkward post-coital embrace or conversation. Similar situations end with money being left on the night-stand, I remember thinking after one such instance.

It was a rough patch as they say. I still loved her and felt that she loved me. The trouble is that rough patches usually end with couples coming back together or going their separate ways whereas our's would end with me going off to another world and perhaps never coming back. I just didn't know how to make things better and any attempt to start a meaningful conversation on the topic ended in either an argument, angry sex or both.

"What are you reading?" she asked me one day and took up some space next to me on the couch. She was wearing one of my white shirts with her matching bra and panties underneath. Her pale, smooth legs curled up beside my own and I instinctively rested a hand gently on her calf. Her hair was pulled back in a tail and her face had the kind of fresh sheen that comes with make-up removal though I never understood why she bothered with the stuff at all. When I saw she had an expression of genuine interest I gave an honest reply.

"An essay on the decrease of engine output brought about by bad atmospheric conditions," I offered her the data pad, "Interesting stuff, wanna read?"

The first honest smile I had seen in days flashed across her face before she feigned annoyance with me, "Don't make fun of me Jacob." I placed the pad on the table and the text faded out of being. I then put an arm around Shelly and pulled her close so that her head lay on my chest. Her hair smelt faintly of coconut and I pushed the unruly strands of brown hair back into line with the rest. I watched the shadows across the floor and after some time she spoke, "What's going to happen?"

"Well without decent filters on the air intakes," I spoke like an authority on the subject and scratched my chin, "The dust and chemicals in Helghan's atmosphere will rot our thrusters from the inside out."

"I meant with us."

"I know you did."

She fell asleep soon after this and I stayed awake, trying to match her shallow breathing with my own. Her head slipped from my chest to the lap and I managed to prop it up with a cushion without waking her. I then picked the data pad back up and continued to study the world that would soon take me away from her. She woke two hours later with a sharp intake of breath, startled and lost, "Did I fall asleep?"

"It would certainly seem so," I said and used my finger to scroll down the page, "You've been out for a two hours or so and your head has put my leg to sleep." She sat up, rubbed her eyes and then playfully prodded me in my numb knee. "Can't feel a thing. I await the pins and needles."

She twisted my arm to check the time on my watch, "I can still get six hours before I am up for work." She stood up and I watched her bare feet make their way to the bedroom door before they turned suddenly to point back in my direction. My gaze lifted up to her face. "You coming to bed, Jake?"

I misconstrued what she meant, "Sorry babe, I'm too tired for that tonight."

She smiled impishly, "Don't flatter yourself. I just thought you might like a night away from the couch." I half threw the pad onto the table and jumped to my feet. So enamoured was I at the thought of a night back in each other's arms that I forgot about my temporarily dozing limb and within two steps was face down in the floor. She laughed first, a stifled giggle before she rushed over to help me to my feet. She had been in the position of helping me to the bedroom before but with two major differences. This time I wasn't drunk and she didn't hate me for it. We both slept soundly that night and the four nights that remained before I left. Nothing was fixed between us nor could it be, we just made the most of the time we had left.

My last evening in the apartment was spent alone (Shelly was out with friends, including Tim's estranged wife) and I lost myself in the offerings of television. Talk of the Helghan invasion was escalating and everybody was making speeches with very careful language about the threat of said invasion. News programmes were setting aside more and more of their airtime for debates amongst high ranking politicians and military personnel. Strange to watch people pretend that there was even a decision left to make, but no doubt eyes were watching on Helghan too and better to put on a front that preparations were not already under way. The mass deceit was enough to drive me to drink.

General McGuire only appeared once on one of the televised debates and looked utterly out of place and uncomfortable. He was in a situation that couldn't be solved with violence even though he would have happily brawled with the stuffy, groomed suits around the table with him. To see the head of the entire Marine Corps reduced to a talking head on my television caused me no small amount of glee. I watched with interest as he pretended not to know if an invasion was likely and wouldn't have been surprised if he had read these answers from the back of his hand. A question was put forward by the presenter as to what the panel thought about the Helghast as a people. The politicians followed the usual line of a 'proud and diligent race' who simply overstepped their bounds and should be mindful of their place. The general's answer was a little more interesting.

"Well," I could see his brain attempt to formulate a sentence about the Helghast that didn't contain any profanity, "I don't think there is a people in the galaxy that I enjoy shooting more than the Helghast." There was silence from the set, the presenter put his hand to his ear to try and comprehend what was being screamed at him from the producers. The politicians adjusted their neck ties and looked to each other for how to deal with this situation. Only the general looked comfortable now, perhaps in the knowledge that he would never again be forced to sit through anything like that.

My initial instinct was to laugh, a shocked guffaw that nearly made me spit my mouthful over my lap. Suddenly I was glad to be alone, that Shelly wasn't there to see my reaction to the general's comment. It was an impossible outlook to explain and one that even I wouldn't fully understand until I was on Helghan. I put off the television, put away the liquor and slumped into the couch for a quick nap before she returned from her evening out. Helghan would never be further from us than it was that night.

* * *

><p><strong>A short but important chapter. It was a choice between this and a chapter about marine corps training, which would have just been another mass of swearing. I figured the introduction with McGuire was more than enough to explain what training might have been like. This chapter also holds the closest thing I will probably ever write to a sex scene.<strong>


	5. No Waiver

I didn't mind waiting for trains, never really minded waiting for anything. 'Hurry up and wait' was a mantra of my father's and since I was never much into visiting graves of laying flowers, I would use any time spent waiting to remember him. He had worked away from home on the far side of the globe, I always accompanied him to the station and would be there for his return. We waited together, after arriving at least an hour early, back from the platform and sat on the ground. He would ask me about school and my friends to which I would reel off endless stories of childish exaggeration in reply. He would ask, "How's your mother?" with no follow up queries to my very vague responses. When this line of conversation was exhausted we would watch the busy people round about us with their rushed, last-minute lives as they leaped between closing automatic doors.

"I met your mother that way," he would mutter, perhaps only to himself until he saw I had heard him, but in a light and cheerful tone. I was seven and sat atop his duffel bag. "I arrived early, even for me and watched as the doors closed just too quickly for her. I was the only other person on the platform, offered her a coffee and the promise of a proper date when I got back from my work cycle." I can't remember how many times he repeated that story - maybe it was every time we were at the station - but I never called him on it. I was too young to understand the extent to which the divorce had affected him. The trips to the station continued long into my teens, until I left home for higher education. He died soon after, when I was nineteen and whilst he was away working. Malfunction on a company dropship brought it down killing all six on board. I still went to the station to meet the train he would have come home on. I suppose I didn't believe he was gone until he didn't disembark, he never missed a train. I stopped talking to my mother when she didn't come to the funeral and haven't since.

I lie. There was one drunken phone call after the invasion to make sure she was safe, "Mom, you okay?"

"Jake? It's good to hear yo-"

So my mind was elsewhere as I stood in uniform on the very same platform waiting for a train out of Vekta City. I wasn't a spiritual person by any stretch, but I couldn't help but imagine my father stood next me, itching his pitch black moustache. The flight suit was no more and in its place was the olive drab shirt and pants of military men with the newly designed ISA Air Mobile patch on one shoulder and the butter bars of a second lieutenant on the lapels. So lost in thought was I that I didn't notice an elderly gentleman address me with a query. I shook away the memories, "I'm sorry sir, could you repeat that?"

He was old, almost entirely bald save for whisps on either side of his liver spotted head but I could see in his eye that he still had his wits about him, "What's going on? Anything I should be concerned about?" He pinched at his crooked nose repeatedly as though trying to loosen something.

"No need to panic sir," I reached into my head for the scripted line, "Just a routine training operation."

"When does the invasion begin?"

"Even if there were an invasion in the planning, sir," I remained utterly dead pan in my delivery, "I wouldn't be able to tell you about it." This seemed to satisfy the codger and he shuffled off muttering to himself. I returned to thoughts of my father and half watched people potter around, some looked back at me nervously and I saw others weigh up the idea of asking me questions. Everyone knew something was in the works but the media and government weren't playing fair with them. I wished I could have told them everything, if only to stop them staring. The grav-train arrived soon after, a long streak of silver that pulled silently up at the platform. I hopped on board and grabbed a table for myself and the seat next to me for my bag. I watched the pristine, white interior fill into colour with dozens of fellow passengers. But nobody sat across the table from me, perhaps worried of the direction that friendly conversation would inevitably take. You couldn't hear the electromagnets start up, just the high frequency vibration that rose up through your seat and just as I thought we were about to move, there was a commotion at the door nearest me.

I saw a mess of red hair push past passengers who were stowing their luggage, there were no apologies and he received looks that you could describe as wordless death threats. He wore an olive green uniform like my own and I noticed people's glances between myself and this new character - guilty by association. He stopped at my table with his thin, freckled face split by a toothy grin, "This seat taken buddy?" And sat before I had the opportunity to reply. The name tag on his shirt read 'Jones' but he was far more interested in my shoulder badge, "Air Cav? Oh boy! You a pilot? What am I thinking? Of course you are!" He had a conversation with himself and filled in my blanks at a mile a minute. "I forgot! You're an officer, I should be calling you sir! Still not used to this chain of command shit."

"Don't worry about that too much," I smiled back, he was infectious, "Lieutenant or LT will do just fine. You're part of the engineering corps?" I pointed to his own patch.

"Yessir," he patted the geometric spanner on his shoulder, "Another innocent bystander shoved between the Navy and the Marines. I remember seeing you at bootcamp!" He was a good few years younger than me and seemed to have little control over the volume of his own voice which made me a little nervous about our conversation being held on a public train. He saw the concern in my face, "Calm yourself lieutenant, I might be loud but I'm not a complete dumbass."

"How long is the ride?" my eyes were drawn to the window as we passed out of the city, green took over from the grey and white.

"Two hours on this cattle wagon and then another two or three on the military transport out to the factory," Jones just couldn't sit still, tapping his fingers and rearranging his legs under the table, "I make the trip a few times a week. You can lose days out there when there's a big project going on."

"And this one?"

He balanced his words before he spoke, as though there were a government censor in his head, "Weeks on this one and it cost me three decent girlfriends too, crazy dames they were too, sir. They never like secrets, military or otherwise. We was in development even before the Helghast invaded." The mention of Higs turned heads in the seats opposite, Jones and I stared at them until they went back to minding their own business. "I wish I could tell you about it. Man, I wish I could!" I imagined it must have been the hardest time for him, indeed for all those involved in the development, to be so close to the revelation of over a year's work and still unable to say a single word about it to others. So we exchanged small talk; boot camp horror stories and the like. More interesting conversation and all the questions I burned to ask would have to wait until we were on the way to the 'factory'.

We made those on the train with us increasingly uneasy, I noticed, with our off-colour jokes and incessant jargon drawing forced sighs and judgemental looks. I had been no choir boy before but our time with the marines had tinted our vocabularies a light blue and the curses left my lips before I even realised. Vekta's lush vistas slipped silently passed the window and my eye would pick out single details - a building or far off dropship - only half listening to Jones' constant, excited ramblings. I must have dozed off because I was awoken with a hand at my shoulder, "Dude- sir, time to switch trains," Jones' grinning face was not something I wanted to wake up to again, it felt like I was back at the academy and somebody shaved off my eyebrows during the night.

I don't remember switching trains, just the change in surroundings. Everything became far less... civilian and the number of men in uniform increased dramatically. This station, some hours outside of Vekta City was in use by the public but a quick flash of an ID card to two scary-looking grunts at a checkpoint took Jones and myself into a whole separate area of the complex. He led me, groggy and lost, across smooth stone floors, under notice boards, in and out of groups of olive uniforms all discussing how important their time was. Train arrivals and departures were announced by a tinny, automatic voice. It felt real now, the invasion. As though up until that point everything could have been scrapped and we could all have gone back to, and gotten on with, our lives. But all these men around me brought about the realisation that though the invasion may still have been as far off as a year, but the ball was rolling now.

I had hoped to find Rick or even Tim on the second leg of my journey but either I was ahead of behind them and again I had only Jones for company. The second train had none of the white-panelled luxury of its civilian-carrying counterpart. It was a grey, rattling machine of purpose and the seats provided little comfort. Jones explained with a grin as we sat down, "Cushions add up and eventually the train could be carrying another tank instead." That was the engineer talking, all load ratios and engine performance. We were surrounded by other personnel and I recognised a few faces from the Shuttle Club though the marine training appeared to have changed them. A missing tooth here, a bruised eye there but there was more. Not so much a missing smile, but a different one. Still nobody I knew well enough for an excuse to ditch Jones - even if he was growing on me. Though being on a military transport allowed our conversation to drift into far more comfortable territory.

"So tell me about it," I said eventually when I bored of waiting for the train to start moving.

"What d'ya wanna know?" Jones reached into a pocket and produced a small, square-ruled notebook. It opened to reveal sketches, numbers and equations. I was surprised to see paper.

"You don't use data tablets?"

"And have some peace-nick grab the plans right out of the air from the seat next to me on the commute home?" Jones looked dismayed, "No sir, paper may be archaic but it has its advantages."

"McGuire gave us a peek before he stuck his boot up our collective ass," I paused but decided to say it anyway, "It might be the ugliest ship I have ever seen." I had expected him to be hurt, his hard work badmouthed by some quasi-officer asshole, but he surprised me.

"I know sir, right?" he laughed and gestured with his hands, "It's a goddamn brick with thrusters! But it can turn on a dime if you wanted and will stand up to a gentle crash if needs be."

"What are the specifics?" I would get a datapad on arrival at the factory but it was nice to be just one step ahead.

"It's just over two tonnes," Jones flicked through dog-eared pages, "But can carry the best part of two times that much again and still get its ugly ass off the ground." This was surprising, six to eight men on the back of this thing would not come close to that, equipment and all. Jones saw my face, "Why so much thrust? We were designing a new cargo vessel, then McGuire shows up and tells us he's sticking marines on it instead. We spent fucking ages on that engine and weren't starting from scratch so just shoved into a smaller version of the original chassis design." I was amazed, the thing was little more than an overpowered cargo deck.

I laughed, "Do the marines know that they will be flying into Helghan on those things?"

Jones' freckles stretched apart with his grin, "No. McGuire is an equal opportunities asshole."

"How fast?" I had to ask.

"We've clocked it at seventy knots," Jones turned to another page, "But we aren't pilots. A few of the guys are good enough for basic testing, though it's you guys who are gonna find its limits." I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow and make a grin as wide as his. Unknown territory, frontierism.

"How many do you have?" I thought of Tim crawling out of a wreck apologising and Rick doing the same but complaining that it wasn't a good enough machine for his needs.

"Honestly sir," Jones closed the notebook and hid it away, "I reckon we can churn these things out faster than you can crash them."

"Sounds like a challenge."

A few hours later I was staring out over an artificial ocean. The concrete stretched so far I swear I could see the curve of Vekta itself, as though a great, grey rug had been rolled over all and sundry. Behind me was the factory, an ISA manufacturing plant that had been tasked with the development and mass construction of the engineers' latest incarnation of the Intruder. When we had arrived at the complex's transport terminal Jones made his way straight to the foreman's office with me in tow. The plump engineer behind his desk, basking in the breeze from his air conditioner, had given me an accusatory look and told us their was something going down outside in the main staging area.

That was how we found ourselves on the vast expanse of concrete, the dark clouded sky threatening a downpour and six intruders spread out in a line surrounded by both Air Cav and engineering personnel. All of them arguing and everyone shouting to be heard above the rest, a wash of anger over the sea of grey. A familiar face pushed through, apologising to each and every person who had to move for him, "Jake! Jesus man, what took you?"

"I didn't realised there was a rush," I introduced Tim to Jones and waited through their awkward greetings before adding, "The hell is going on?"

"The cogheads gather us up off of the train and lead us out here," Tim mopped his brow with a soggy handkerchief, "They give us a quick look at the things, pointed out the features and what have you."

Jones' machine gun chatter broke him off, "The plan was to give you guys a better look at the machine before taking you back inside for orientation."

Tim burst back in, "Yeah! See, they told us that or one of 'em did. Some guy with a white moustache says we were to go back inside. But a few of us-"

"Rick?" I filled in his mental gap.

"Yeah and a few others." I could already pick his voice out over the din and imagined his reaction to being told he had to wait to fly the thing. I had to go talk to him, before the fists flew. What I needed was a stiff drink to see my through this interjection but there wasn't going to be any of that out here. Straight off the train and we were already at each other's throats. A cigarette would have to suffice and I lit up as I pushed the mess of engineers and pilots toward the Intruders. The contraptions, hunks of metal jutting out above the testosterone, were in two rows of three and some twenty feet apart. Rick was between the two closest with some other pilots and argued with a bald, moustached man some six inches shorter than himself. A stubby finger was pushed repeatedly into Rick's chest as a form of punctuation to the bald man's line of argument. The others nearby were embroiled in their own arguments and gestured to the Intruders, the sky and the factory.

"Rick!" I yelled and he gave me a look of exasperation, the bald engineer kept arguing despite Rick's switch in attention.

"Where the _fuck _have you bee-" he was cut off as I offered him a cigarette and that was as far as my plan extended, shutting him up for a second. As he took my lighter and sparked up, I turned the pack to engineer who stared at me until I shrugged and put it back in my pocket.

"Come on, five minutes and already you are pissing somebody off?" I gestured to the moustache and took a long draw.

A few heavy drags had calmed Rick down somewhat. He was clean-shaven as ever but the stresses of the day had meant his hair was a little out of place which, on Rick, was more indicative of the situation than anything else. "I tell ya Jake. They drag us out here, show us the things, jerk each other off about how amazing it is and then tell us to go back inside!"

The engineer stroked his moustache and came into the conversation with as raspy growl of a voice, "We can't let you fly them until-" I held up a palm to him with a pleading look and he let Rick continue.

Who then dug the hole he was already in even deeper and gestured with his cigarette in hand, "So _Scolar Visari _here says we have to sit through a two hour fucking lecture first! We came here to fly not watch slide shows!" My head dropped in disbelief at his remark and I expected the engineer to make a lunge at him, but the man was more level headed than I have him credit for.

Instead, he simply caved, "Fine. Fly it. Kill yourself for all I care, but without going through orientation the ISA accepts no responsibility for any injury or damages." Was he an engineer or a lawyer?

Rick put the cigarette back in his lips and smiled, the amiable asshole that I knew returned, "Sir that is all I was asking for, the opportunity to kill myself without a waiver."


	6. In The Deep End

The bald, stout engineer with the white moustache took the first lecture. Major Dunbar was how he introduced himself after he entered the lecture theatre filled with some hundred or so pilots, maybe more. New faces too from units other than our own, General McGuire must have widened the net which definitely made sense; we needed all the man power we could get. A holographic projector toward the front had a wireframe model of an Intruder hang in the air and spun listfully around its centre of gravity. Dunbar had strolled in front of the model, one hand held behind his rotund back and spoke to us in a voice than somehow both boomed and rasped. His moustache was stretched by a broad grin. He wore the smile and Lieutenant Richard Davis wore a cast on his left wrist.

It had started off well enough. Everybody had scampered off to a safe distance, Rick clambered into the cockpit and put on the helmet than hung up inside. He followed Dunbar's radioed instructions to the letter and soon had the hulk of steel held in a steady hover some twenty or thirty feet off the ground. It was the first time any of the pilots had seen the thing actually perform and there was a gentle murmur amongst the group that this was nothing we hadn't seen before, just a little bit uglier. I saw the bald major put a hand to headset he used to communicate with Rick and the Intruder slowly tipped itself to the right until the machine was at an angle of around twenty degrees to the deck. Thirty. Thirty-five. Dunbar shouted something into his microphone but Rick didn't appear to listen and the rotation continued. Jones was suddenly standing next to me, "We've never gone past forty degrees to the ground. At that point the side thruster can't compete with the main engine underneath and..."

Rick finished Jones' impromptu mechanics lesson. The Intruder seemed to almost flip of its own accord until it was horizontal with the concrete and dropped sharply. The engines were cut and the mass of metal crashed the last twenty feet to the ground. Engineers with fire extinguishers rushed forward to the wreck until they saw there was no need for them and instead worked on wrenching the cockpit open instead. Tim, Jones and myself were behind them waiting to see the outcome. The flame-haired engineer was impressed, "He managed to get the engines off. When that happened to us we either fell upside down or landed like that and skidded about the place with the main thruster still on." I didn't need to see them open the tin can to know that Rick was okay.

"Tell that bald bastard I would have been fine if he stopped screaming in my ear. I think my wrist is broken. I love this fucking machine!"

Though he would have to wait at least two weeks to fly it again and lectures from the engineers would fill in those lazy days. Back at the first lecture we all knew that Major Dunbar's shit-kicker grin was for Rick's benefit and his eyes would fix in the lieutenant's general direction to make a point. Usually it was something along the lines of, "And you should listen to this if you don't want to break an arm, or worse." A few chuckles would fire off from our rows, staggered amongst the rows in loose groups. Then he would move onto the next holographic projection slide with a heavy cough and continue his lecture.

He went through everything Jones had told me on the train and much more. Turning circles, the thrust ratios between the main and manoeuvring engines, cockpit reinforcements, maximum rate of climb, general armouring and all the rest. The projected wireframes would separate and explode into the machine's individual parts with a wave of Dunbar's hand, before reconstructing themselves again as he moved onto another aspect. We took notes, scribbled over the data tablets given to us on entry that themselves contained all the information imparted to us over the course of the three hour lecture. It was far too much to effectively take in a single session and I foresaw many a late night digging through all the pages and details we now had to hand.

In closing, Dunbar was encouragingly honest with us, "I appreciate that today may might not have seemed as such, but this is to be a collaborative effort between us and yourselves. This lecture was to bring you guys up to speed with what we already know and we expect to learn just as much again from you guys. Nothing is classified here and all areas are open to you so long as the correct safety protocols-" the look to Rick again, "-are followed. We're an open book and expect nothing less from you. You have an idea or a doubt, express it and we'll act on it."

There were nods of agreement and the next few months looked increasingly bright in terms of purpose. I had almost forgotten when the whole project's aim was, what it was all for; to get guns on the ground so that they could kill and conquer. Dunbar snapped me back with a loud, single clap of his hands, "Right! Any quick questions?"

A few hands slithered into the air, Dunbar pointed to one behind myself and a nervous voice asked, "S- sir, are the loads and units all based on Vektan gravity?"

"Yes they are, convert as necessary," a few hands disappeared at this answer and Dunbar picked one of the remaining, "You, go."

"Yessir, can we assume that you taken the atmospheric conditions into account? That place will chew up an engine designed for our air." I thought back to the datapads on my table, to Shelly's head resting in my lap as she slept.

Dunbar paced as he spoke, "The engines, intakes and filters are built around out best estimates of Helghan's atmospheric make up. But to be perfectly honest, we won't know for sure until we get there." The rest of the hands went down, the big questions revolved around this unknown quantity of the planet itself - scarcely questions about the machine at all. Dunbar then stood front and centre, hands on his hips, "Right, that'll do for now. You men go get yourself settled in the barracks and get a good night's sleep. You start flying tomorrow, most of you anyway.

We milled out way out of the dim theatre and into the brightness of a corridor. I picked Tim and Rick out of the crowd and moved in beside them, "Well?"

"That guy is such a prick," Rick scratched inside his cast using the other hand, "Talking to us like we're kids."

"We aren't all ace pilots like you," I rested an arm on his shoulder, "Some of us need to be led by the hand." The pun went down well with Tim.

"I always wondered how much flying you actually did," he put it to Rick, "If all your stories about banging those broads are true." Rick used to moonlight as a private pilot taking tourists on aerial tours of Vekta's natural wonders, his trips would usually end with his fares asking to see some fancy manoeuvres and then throwing up over their own shoes. Rick's version of events however usually ended along the lines of, "So while the guy's off cleaning his shoes, I fuck his girlfriend." Maybe it was true, I certainly wouldn't have been surprised. But all of that was a world away from the ISA Engineering Complex, which we wouldn't have authorisation to leave for the first four or so weeks. So Rick's temperament was easily understandable as we strolled out of the operations building and across the concrete plain toward our hastily constructed barracks. Flimsy aluminium shacks with all the basic amenities, heaven compared to boot camp though. Without any real structure to our unit - with the wash of newcomers - it had been first come first serve with the toss of belongings onto a bunk and I was relieved to find still there on my return.

"Nothing to do now but sleep," Tim fell onto the hard mattress with a bump.

I turned to Rick, "Want me to untie your boot laces for you?"

"Fuck you, Jake."

One week later I had the strangest feeling of deja vu, "Fuck you, Jake! God-fucking-damn you!" Rick screamed in my ear as I held the Intruder some ten feet off the ground as he found his bearings on the vehicle's deck, I jerked the machine from left to right to mess with you. "Stop mucking around! You want me to break the other wrist?" I didn't answer but levelled out and waited for his bitching to finish.

Like all of life's great endeavours, flying the Intruder was easy to pick up but took real effort to produce a good, even flight and even more to pull off intricate manoeuvres. As with most aircraft throughout the centuries, a cyclic stick controlled the vehicle's pitch - forward/back to lower/lift the nose and left/right to roll the craft in either direction. A pedal under either foot would spin the Intruder on the spot and in a hover the craft had a turning circle of zero. The throttle was a little more complicated than simply pushing up the power and was used in conjunction with a lever which controlled the proportion of power going to both the main and manoeuvring thrusters. The balance of the machine itself was such that its centre of gravity was slightly further forward than the engine on the underside, which meant that the thing would try to go ass over face if the nose was too low. But by using the side thrusters to carry some of the weight and work slightly against the forward motion you could hold the Intruder in balance with the nose low. Careful control of the balance of the engines could result in some impressive acceleration, even though you were staring down at the ground from the cockpit. And this was all in addition to keeping the ship's orientation level using the stick and pedals. It took some getting used to say the least.

That first week, most pilots spent their air time - some six hours or more a day - whizzing up and down in as straight a line as possible trying to get used to the nose-heavy, metal beast. Before performing a tight, banked u-turn. Lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Naturally a few tried to repeat Rick's balancing act from the first day, with varied results. One managed to hold the craft at forty-five degrees to the deck and others landed spectacularly on their heads. Hell, we were having a blast as we all tried to hit the hundred knot mark and out area of operations was large enough so that dozens of Intruders were active at any given time. But after a week of fucking about in the sky like a bunch of frat boys, Rick brought us all back down.

We were in the mess hall, a group of us at one table including Rick, Tim and myself. We ate what passed in the military for spaghetti and traded stories, manoeuvres, various ideas and potential improvements. One guy at the table had arranged his meatballs into what he thought would be a good flight formation. Rick fiddled with the fork in his left hand, trying to get a decent grip but gave up and dropped it in a rage, "Jerking each other off how awesome you are is all well and good with just yourself to worry about. But do have that shit you guys do out there with a squad of marines on the back I bet dollars to fucking doughnuts it starts to rain grunts."

Sergeant Nolte, one of the engineers who spent his days sorting through our flight data, piped up, "Sir I can't help but imagine how much more stressed you would have been with the other wrist in a cast." Nolte folded his hairy forearms together and made a jerking motion with his right fist. There was laughter around the table and Rick responded with the toss of a single strand of pasta which landed on the sergeant's shoulder.

"Ol' grumpy here is right," I muttered into my cup and took a swig of crude, instant coffee, "We can't keep flying unladen all the time." Rick sat back, triumphant and pointed at me for the others to listen. "And I think we should all thank him for volunteering."

It took him a second to realise, "What!" Tim guffawed next to him and got a slap around his straw-coloured head for the trouble.

"Wait! I said wait!" I had begun to sway the machine forward and back in impatience of Rick and his preparation, "Okay that's me hooked on." He had disappeared on a quick scavenge after agreeing to be the guinea pig - the dog we would be sending into space - and returned with rope and fastening clasps of the sort used for mountaineering. He had stood there holding the bundle in arm and cast, when asked where he found it, "the gettin' place" was his explanation.

"How high?" I asked over the comms.

"What does it matter?" Rick came back despondent, "One height is much the same as another when it comes to landing on your skull." I pushed out the throttle - taking care to keep the engines in balance - and we lifted on cushion of spent fuel to around fifty feet then waited for him to give the word. "Okay," he eventually panted, "Go for it."

I eased the cyclic stick forward , the nose dropped and I had to fix a slight lean to the right with the slightest of touches to the left pedal. We lurched forward and lost a little altitude as I felt out the correct balance of throttle and orientation. Once I found it, picking up speed and maintaining altitude became easy, so I could pay more attention to Rick whispering to himself, "Shit. Fuck. Shit." I could imagine his hands gripped around the knee-high rail, knuckles white from the exertion and throat hoarse from the wind and his own screaming.

To turn, first I had to slow the ship down. Two tonnes of metal moving at seventy knots is not an easy thing to stop and long before turn proper you need to haul the nose back up. This means that the drive force comes from the side thrusters and you need to pull back on the throttle to prevent a jump in altitude. Roll slightly into the turn and steady pedal use will bring you round in a tight arc. Had I gone into the turn completely level, the centripetal acceleration would have had Rick hanging off the far side, whereas a partial tilt kept him steady on the deck.

I was nervous for his sake and went into the turn more slowly than normal with a careful eye on the air speed, orientation and altitude. Multi-tasking doesn't cover it, so much requires your constant attention and twice as many things again require your partial attention. I didn't have time to think how all this looked to the small crowd down below, but had watched dozens of other pilots do this kind of turn countless times. The Intruder couldn't be described as anything other than a steel brick with a cockpit and jet engine. I thought it graceful in flight, but only because of how useless it was in any other form. Your eye was caught by the throbbing blue flame under the chassis that kept the thing in the air and the thin, blue trails as it turns and swerves. Its engines emitted a dull whine that would turn to a groan when put through their paces and everywhere they went came the sweet aroma of spent jet fuel - if we could have drank the stuff at breakfast we would have.

During my own turn, Rick's screamed curses switched to raucous laughter and exclamations, I didn't know if he was going to piss his pants or cream himself as we pulled into the flat-out push back to where we started, "Fast as you can, Jake! Floor the thing! Break my legs and it would still be worth it!"

The weeks that followed eventually spawned their own semi-fluid schedule of: flying, sleeping, eating, studying, pissing, shitting and jerking off. The order may have changed occasionally but the constituent parts were always the same. The barracks slowly filled with personal belongings around the bunks and porn appeared on the walls. Until there came a swarm of rats and some of the centrefolds were replaced with a scorecard of confirmed kill counts (corpses were to be collected in order to be official). Flying time was divided between manoeuvres, formation flying, night flying, group take-off and landing. Specific scenarios were a personal favourite of mine.

Small city blocks were painted out on the concrete, grids of rectangles with the building's height written inside, complete with overhead cables and their respective heights from the deck. In formation would then be given to us mid-flight of where and how to land within a given situation, eyes on the ground would watch we approached and then pilots would argue for hours afterwards about whether or not they clipped the imaginary buildings. These sort of altercations would soon be forgotten as two small city blocks of buildings were under construction away from the base. Empty steel-frame and concrete structures, husks that we could practice actual landings and deployments on. It was estimated to be finished two months after we started training but ran over schedule (and budget) and we had to make do with painted lines for longer than we would have liked.

After the first six weeks on base were feeling quite at home in the place and the routine of life as an Intruder test pilot had become a welcome familiarity instead of the grinding bore it had been in the beginning. And so in the ISA's infinite wisdom it was deemed time to give us original entrants a week's leave. The reasoning was two fold, firstly to stop us getting cabin fever and crashing an Intruder into the barracks or factory for shits and giggles. Secondly (and more important than our sanity), a second wave of pilots was set to arrive on the base and its operations were widening in general, our week away gave a chance to construct more barracks and the rest. There were even rumours of a secondary training complex being set up in time for the arrival of the marines themselves.

A week back in Vekta City should have been a welcome distraction from it all, but I couldn't break myself from the grasp of the war's build up. I stayed with Tim in his tiny apartment (his wife had eventually won the house) after Rick had explicitly told me he didn't want me 'cock-blocking' him by hanging around his place. The three of us spent almost the whole week in the officers' club drinking, studying, discussing. I toyed with idea of seeing Shelly but knew I wouldn't be good company with my mind locked onto the Intruder and the impending war. Better to keep away and keep drunk. Six weeks pay disappeared in as many days.

We went back to the base - worse for wear - to find the new guys had taken our bunks and our porn. They gave us some dirty looks as we came in, "The fuck are you guys?" I held Rick back and we walked out and lit up some cigarettes.

Tim couldn't help but find the silver lining, "Didn't you guys see? At least our rat kill counts haven't been beaten."

**Author's Note: Been doing quite a bit of research for this. And by 'research' I mean watching 'Black Hawk Down', 'We Were Soldiers', 'The Pacific' and of course 'Generation Kill'. Also re-reading 'Chickenhawk' by Robert Mason, a wonderful book about a huey pilot in Vietnam and the original inspiration for the story as a whole. So hit me up with a review if the need takes you. Loads of fun to write about these guys, won't lie.**


	7. Where To Roll The Grenade

"They'd never admit it to me, let alone you," Captain Coulson and I watched a squad of marines file passed toward an intruder, "But hanging onto the back of these things gives them the goddamn willies right now." Coulson was a Marine company commander whom I had met a couple of times whilst drunk in Vekta City and was it was a happy surprise when he turned up at the new training area a few miles away from the original factory complex. We had been unceremoniously thrown out by the new wave of recruits. Tall, broad and with a barking voice that only the ISA Marine Corps could make full use of, the captain was destined for far greater things and the invasion was to be an opportunity for him to get his oak leaves, reach major. It wasn't even close to noon but already the sun was making us sweat, Coulson mopped his brow and the areas of exposed scalp left by his short, dark receding hair. "They don't trust you guys either, but they all love the challenge. Once one of them climbs aboard nobody else wants to look like a chicken."

"Trust me sir," I lit the first cigarette of the day, "I'm not putting your boys through anything I haven't already done myself. We were our own guinea pigs." Memories of hanging on for dear life as another pilot got used to flying with somebody on the intruder's deck came back to me - as a group we decided that half the education was knowing what you would be putting others through. Those first few laps were a case of closing your eyes and waiting until the damn thing stopped moving, but eventually you got used to it and some even started to get their kicks from it. The truly brave were those who dared to stand up mid flight, one man managed to stay in a low crouch through a particularly tight turn and won four desserts for his trouble in the mess hall. The marines shared our initial sense of trepidation over the machine's safety and followed the same learning curve, but they quickly showed themselves to have far larger balls than anybody in our outfit. I was brought back to the day at hand by Jones wandering over to the captain and myself, his shirt was open a mesh of red hair was tangled on his chest.

"Morning sirs," he saluted and we lifted our hands lazily in response, "And ain't it a beautiful morning for some flying?" Protocol was now rife throughout the men, officers were to be called sir at all times with no exceptions ("I don't care how many Higs he kissed to get you out of that POW camp" was how I heard it put, never heard the context of this anecdote) and all the other red tape that came with it. We were split into three sections; pilots, engineers, marines and each of those were further divided into officers and enlisted personnel. We never did find out from how high up the idea for the increase in discipline came from since everybody I asked said they were just following orders. It made sense though, being test pilots had weakened us as soldiers, made us lazy and careless. Putting the lives of marines into careless hands would have been a grievous mistake. In the months following the marines' arrival the base became an all purpose military training centre complete with PT (physical training) equipment and gun range in addition to all the intruder-based infrastructure. And so our time was further delegated between flying and general combat training, like a little bit of boot camp had wormed its way back into my life.

As well as the newly-regimented schedule we had a new unit structure to contend with. Each pilot was assigned an engineer as crew chief and each pair was assigned an intruder as their own responsibility. Companies were then made up of several of these pilot/engineer pairs and so forth. For my sins they gave me Jones and all the red-haired enthusiasm that came along with him. My relationship with him became predictably cyclical and there were days when his over-exuberance had me fantasising about throttling his freckled neck. But, self-aware as he was, he the knew the days to lay off with the questions and prattle. I could put with him on those other days because his excess of personality was only surpassed by his knowledge of the intruder and if he didn't go to bed covered in oil and engine grease then he considered it a day wasted. The crew chief checked over the intruder at the end of the day and kept the wreck going, during flight he was in radio contact with the pilot from the deck and the go between pilot and any human cargo they might be carrying.

As such there was a certain level of disconnect between the pilots and the enlisted marines, we rarely crossed paths outside of flight time. Jones was my link to them and I never knew what his fast mouth was telling them about me or if they even cared enough to ask. Not forming any real bonds with the baseline grunt was, as I saw it anyway, essential to staying a pragmatic pilot. We would fly in, drop the men off and fly out again. Leaving your best friend in the sorts of hell we would be flying into would be the hardest thing there was. Better not to make best friends of them in the first place.

Coulson spoke to me about it that morning, "It's tough sometimes, staying so aloof and separate from them." We watched another squad of grunts in full combat gear but with empty eighty-twos (the slang digs itself deep into the brain) double-time over toward an intruder. I received a wave from the cockpit, couldn't make out who the hell it was but waved back all the same. Another machine flew in low overheard and I sucked in heavily on the fumes. Coulson continued, "It's easier for me because they have seen me shoot Higs at their sides during one invasion already, you know? They can cut me a little slack when I'm asshole. I listen to their issues but can't get to involved in the camaraderie and when the shit rolls down from on high I'm the guy who tries to catch it before it his them."

"But me?" I took another drag, nicotine was always king but inhaling jet fumes had replaced alcohol as my secondary vice, "I worry they see me as some officer prick who just happens to be able to fly."

The captain held a hand to his forehead to block the glare from the sun and watched the intruder take off, "That's probably exactly what they think. Nicknames will no doubt start popping up if they haven't already. What's your itinerary for today?"

"Approach manoeuvres with..." I looked to Jones in desperation.

"Third battalion, bravo company, second platoon," Jones reeled it off like he had made the decision himself, grinning at me all the while, "You awake yet Jake, sir?" I gave him the finger and returned the smile.

"Lieutenant Stevens?" Coulson just sighed and I knew I was in for a bad day, "Good luck with him, he's a little... jumpy."

Coulson had not been bullshitting me. Stevens needed constant reassurance from me, when we were still on the ground and I had to listen to him, that I would do my "utmost to keep this flight smooth and easy for me and my boys". I saw his 'boys' roll their eyes at him but if they felt my pain at having to deal with him they sure didn't say anything about it to me. Once in the air though, he was Jones' problem and the poor guy got a taste of his own medicine with Jumpy Stevens talking his ear off about this thing and the other. War brought all sorts of people out of the dark corners of Marine Corps' offices and put in stations of combat leadership. Most eventually took to it, but this Stevens guy, one look at him and you knew he was going to get men killed.

I never saw him again after that day of manoeuvres with his platoon all sharpening knives for his back but I saw plenty of shit stains like him. Fish straight out of the water and desperately trying to follow orders on the one hand and learning to breathe the new air with the other. There were good officers and bad officers, those who mingled easily with the men and those who kept their distance from them. You would see marines salute to man's face only to spit once he had turned his back. Being friendly with the men wasn't what set the good officers apart either, they had to respect you and trust you with their lives. They climbed onto the back of those intruders because they were ordered to and nothing more, I could see it in their eyes when they walked passed. There had been no major accidents so far, a few marines had been thrown over the handrail from about ten feet up during a bad take-off but you got the feeling they were just waiting for a good excuse not to bother with the whole damn thing.

Some time after my day with Jumpy Stevens, Rick and I were on the range pumping rounds into Helghan dummies (armour left over after the invasion of Vekta, turned into practice targets filled with sandbags), the eyes no longer glowed but there was some morbid realism to how they reacted to the rounds from our eighty-twos. Pulling the trigger interrupted our conversation as we both lay prone in the dirt. "These marines, boy howdy," Rick said, "They're not afraid- to try anything at least once. They've had me pulling some crazy tight turns to see if they can hang on or not."

"They talk to you?" I was a little hurt.

"Well of course, I'm not an unapproachable asshole like you." I looked over but he continued firing down range without meeting my gaze, "Hey, that's their words- not mine. They saw that the two of us hang out and asked about you."

My shots had started to miss, high and wide, "And what did you tell them?"

"Fuck is there to tell? They think you are one of those guys who focuses too much on his work, imagine that?" he fired his last round and yelled, "Empty!" over the din of the other shots. He then stood up and waited for me to finish and the armourer to check his weapon. Turning his flight cap to face front, he laughed at me, "Are you actually worried about what they think of you?" I ignored him and finished off my own magazine, we wandered away from the range with out empty weapons hanging at our chests. Every soldier on base, pilots and combat engineers included, now had their own eighty-two that was to be with them at all times.

"Jake," he put a hand on my shoulder as we walked, "Let your crew chief worry about being friends with the baby killers. You just concern yourself with flying and keeping the brass off your ass." I lit up and offered him one. "I'm trying to cut back. You should too." He took his arm back and headed away from me. "Firing that gun gives me a fucking hard on, gonna let one fly before Dunbar bores us with another lecture," he shouted over as the distance between us increased, "And Jake, there's something to be said for the marines thinking you're a cold, badass workaholic."

Wargames, they called them. A week of battalion-wide exercises which would pit platoons against each other in a series of scenarios with marines all firing blanks but still somehow pretending that this would prepare them for the real thing. Major Dunbar outlined - with a wave of a fat hand with stubby fingers - the whole thing to us I was bored just hearing about it. We would take the squads into the ever-expanding outlay of concrete husks that served as our staging area and the marines would play war whilst we stood around with our dicks in our hands. I suddenly felt like I was back to square one, shuttling around assholes and waiting for them to need to go back again. Imaginary points of interest were placed in certain buildings on certain levels, MacGuffins designed to amuse us like Helghan stashes of Vektan porn or Visari's personal piss bucket (Dunbar even paused for laughter that never materialised and continued on awkwardly). I zoned out eventually and thought of Shelly, wondered if she was as close to a bizarre, mock suicide as me.

I hadn't spoken to her in a few weeks, putting it off, the one time I did was all excruciating small talk. Honesty is a difficult thing when surrounded by those just looking for a way under your skin to pass the time. I tried writing to her, but just ended up repeating myself and didn't bother sending a single data stream back to her. But hell, she hadn't tried to get in contact with me either and I figured the guilt would all balance out in the end. It's nice to have an excuse to wrap yourself in when the doubts creep over your mind in the depth of night. You wouldn't fucking dare talk about these things with other personnel, not unless you were a glutton for punishment and even though most of us were going through the exact same thing.

"Tell that shit to your right hand." Was the most succinct response I heard from one marine to his lovesick squadmate.

Free was spent engaging in the age-old art of procrastination, waiting for the next item on our schedules. Marines would spar with each other, work out or maintain their equipment. A few read some modern classics or older books on datapad. All these things I saw when I would peek into the wrong marine barracks looking for the officer whose platoon I would be ferrying into the wargames. Faces would stare at me silently from bunks until I turned tail and left again - a real 'what the hell are you doing here' atmosphere. Every building looked the same and any directions given to me by enlisted men were purposely useless or misleading. I came across one man sat on an ammo box outside his shack trying to catch some rays on his tattoo heavy chest - an ornate ISA cruiser being attacked by a giant squid caught my eye.

"Private-" I started.

"Corporal, sir," a polite interuption from a brutish man.

"Corporal," I stood corrected, "Where can I find the officers' digs?"

"Sorry sir," he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, "They don't tell me where they are."

"And why not?"

"Because then I'd know which tent to roll my grenade into."

"Ignore this one sir," a lean sergeant appeared from the shack, "He's been talking about his 'rolling grenade' for weeks now but just doesn't have the goddamn stones to go through with it."

"Or the grenade?" I added warily, but it made them both smile.

"A grenade!" joked the corporal, "That's what's been missing the whole time."

"That's not the only thing this fuck up is missing," the sergeant gave the corporal a kick in the calf, "Who you looking for, lieutenant?"

I read the name scrawled on the back of my hand, "Anderson, fourth batallion, char-"

"Fourth sir?" the sergeant, "You're in luck. Ten shacks that way and you'll find 'Brass Town'." The corporal laughed at the moniker and gave me a lazy salute as I walked off, listening over my shoulder for the tell tale laughter that I was after another wild goose. But the change in surroundings was unmistakable, mostly the lack of litter and topless marines was indicative of being amongst fellow officers. Each shack was also marked with its battalion, company and even appeared to be arranged in some sort of order. I peeked into the shack marked '4th, Charlie' and found myself nose to nose with a horrifically scarred master sergeant.

"Can I help you with something flyboy... sir?" The 'sir' was neither an afterthought nor standing for ceremony but purposefully left to hang and make me feel small.

"I'm looking for Lieutenant Anderson," I had to fight the urge to call him sir even if we both felt as though he deserved it.

"Cameron?" a voice from behind the master sergeant's huge frame, "Jacob Cameron?" It sounded like he was reading my name from the back of his own hand. "Sergeant, go find some private's ass to stick your boot up." He muttered something about warrant officers and stormed out.

Anderson was a few inches shorter than me and with a kind, welcoming smile that seemed more than a little out of place. I walked in and offered him a cigarette which he flat out refused, "Those things'll kill you." The officers' digs were a world away from those of the enlisted men, fisticuffs and porn replaced with games of chess and playing cards. An excess of reading material was scattered around the tables and on the bunks. "So you're taking half of my platoon into this charade?" It was instantly refreshing that he saw the exercise being as futile as I did.

"Yeah, just thought I would come see you in my few spare hours," I enjoyed the opportunity to get away on my own from the other pilots and Jones.

"You're spending your free time coming to see me and talk about work tomorrow?" he pulled up a collapsible chair and motioned to another for myself.

"Wanted to get a head start," I dropped onto the stretched canvas, "Hear any ideas you might have had."

Anderson laughed, "I asked around about you. Found a few squad leaders who have been out with you more than once."

I waited, "And?"

He just shrugged, "And nothing. You bring a map with you? No problem, I got one somewhere around here. See if we can't work something out." Anderson instantly struck me as one of the friendly officers who laughs and jokes with his men, whether he was a _good _officer was an entirely different matter.

We spoke for a few hours and worked out a decent enough approach to our target building. Other officers came and went without so much as a word or iota of attention directed toward us. We shared ideas, weighed up pros and cons. An idea that I though solid and helpful would bring from Anderson a reminder that I was carrying men on the back. Whilst the intruder could afford to be out in the open and line of smalls arms fire, his marines could not. On the other side of that coin, there were turns and drops that he suggested that were simply unsafe to perform. I ran through my pack of cigarettes without even noticing, I was lost in the plan and the only control I felt as though I had over the situation. Come the invasion I would have even less, next to nothing and would simply follow the orders of those I had to assume (hope?) would have a better grasp of what was going on. But as solid as Anderson and I thought our plan was, fate always had other ideas.

Jones was in my ear and I was forced to listen to his half of a conversation with the four marines we had in tow, "I know, I know and her fucking Dad comes in!" I could make out the sound of group laughter. "You did what? Ha! Oh man!" We were one of the three intruders carrying charlie company of the fourth battalion to the area of operations. We were to offload our marines on a five-storey concrete structure and then await them at our rendezvous for extraction. "And the rack on this chick, man! I was a babbling teenager again!"

The buildings came into view and I found a different sight from my last visit some four weeks prior. It had been expanded to some four city blocks of buildings with various heights and construction was continuing (if currently postponed) on the outskirts. The other major change was the level of destruction, scorched holes in some walls and collapsed rubble strewn around their bases. I asked Jones what had happened. "So I had my face- just a sec guys. Yeah sir, the brass asked some of the structural engineers to go in with charges and spruce the place up a bit for the exercises. So anyway, there she was, right fucking there..." I stopped listening to him and focused instead on staying in formation with the other two machines. I was behind and to the left of the lead intruder and found through practice that keeping a certain point of the cockpit's windscreen in line with the lead intruder's deck would keep my in the correct position.

A voice cut in over the top of Jones' coital tale, "All hotel victors, two minutes. Say again, two minutes." The pilot of the lead intruder was some bearded near-mute who came out victorious in our rock, paper, scissors to see who would take point. Whenever he said something to me it was always on the job or some necessary thing to say as though small talk would fry his brain. The third pilot was an ever-fattening waster who spoke even less than the man on point and didn't even return the friendly hello I had given before we left. Tim, I knew, was my enemy for the day and was at that moment carrying the other half of first platoon toward a building directly across from ours. The plan was to land all three intruders on the roof our building and make sure the 'enemy' saw us do so before doing the same on their own, shorter building. Thereby thinking they had a time advantage. The target for both teams was a third building some fifty yards further down the street. Once our competitors had off-loaded, we would take of our intruders down to street level and off load them there. Hopefully fooling them into thinking we were huffing our way down four flights of stairs compared to their two but still with half of our own marines in a higher vantage point. Or at least that was the idea.

"One minute."

"Jones," I relayed, "One minute."

"That's all I need sir, right guys?" I heard the laughter again. The wargame was just that, a childish simulation of the real deal and the marines treated it as such - all jokes and posturing. Jones fell right in line with them, striking that perfect balance between professionalism and personability that I was never able to achieve without alcoholic lubrication.

When closer I spotted men in high visibility gear posted on top of some of the buildings, including our own target building. Referees was the best word for them, there to keep the peace in our wargames and make the calls reserved for a higher power when real bullets were used. He watched our approach with vested interest protecting his face with an arm as three intruders kicked up dust and staggered back to make a little more space. The marines from the lead intruder leapt over railing and make a crouched run toward a low wall that ran around the perimeter of the roof. Four thumbs up indicated they had spotted the other half of the platoon coming in on their own descent. Always was faster than Tim. The men would flip their fists into a thumbs down when their machines were empty and the enemy slugging down the stairs to street level - our time to move again.

But before this could happen, the referee jogged over and slapped my cockpit twice before making a cut-throat gesture. Kill the engine? "Why?" I mouthed the word but received only the same movement again only with added gusto. I cut the engine and kicked open the cockpit in frustration, went toe-to-toe with the captain playing God, "All due respect sir, but what the fuck?"

His weasel voice could have been reading straight from a script as he adjusted his helmet, "Your intruder has been permanently disabled by a yet unknown Helghast defense system. Yourself lieutenant, your crew chief and your marines are KIA." I was so furious that I hardly noticed the other intruder continue with the plan and drop noisily from the roof to street level. Jones must have saw me freaking out and jumped down from the intruder's deck because I felt his hand at my arm, pulling me back.

"Forget it sir, we sit this one out. No big deal." Hours of goddamn planning and interference from the upper echelons had fucked me right out of my own game plan, I might have thrown the captain from the roof were it not for Jones and the marines talking me down from my rage.

"Just a game, sir."

"The plan was sound."

"Better to skip all this kindergarten bullshit anyway, LT." I could see the captain sweating nervously in the afternoon heat and turned my back on him to offer cigarettes to Jones and the others. We climbed back aboard the deck of the intruder and stripped out of our combat vests and shirts to soak up some of the sun. Mock corpses rotting in the heat. I don't remember what happened with the wargame but I reckon Tim must surely have filled me in at some point. Only the dead have seen the end of war and all outcomes are inconsequential to them, pretend or otherwise.


End file.
